Grand Budapest Hotel: An Iconic Comedy

Comedies are always more challenging than tragedies to write and produce - whether they are plays, movies or books. Appealing to the vulnerable emotions of human beings is always easier than making people laugh. Even the Bard's tragedies are better plays than his comedies, in my opinion.

So imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw Wes Anderson's latest comedy, The Grand Budapest Hotel, on its premier night in Toronto. Having never seen any of his films before, I didn't know what to expect except for the fact that I found the promotional trailer for this film absolutely hilarious. Anderson's previous works always seemed too quirky for me but like the Coen brothers, Anderson has a huge following, particularly among younger fans.

According to Anderson, his screenplay was inspired by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig who also wrote Letter From An Unknown Woman and Marie Antoinette. So Anderson wrote the story about the adventures of a legendary concierge, Gustave H, at a famous hotel between the wars, and the lobby boy Zero Moustafa who becomes his protege. A lot of people thought the movie is about a hotel in Budapest, but the whole fictional hotel is actually located in an imaginary place in Europe that looks more like Switzerland, but the film was actually shot in Saxony, Germany.

The result of Anderson's writing and direction is a highly-creative film which is not only extremely cartoonish and funny, but it's so beautifully shot that I felt like I was watching a flawless fairy tale for grown-ups! But beneath the laughter also lies a satire about the end of the European aristocracy with the brutal onslaught of the Nazis during the war. Comedies are all about timing, and Anderson's situational and caricatural work would certainly go down in history as one of the most iconic comedies of our times!

The movie, of course, is very much a success because of its cast of 'substantial' thousands, some of whom are regulars in Anderson's works - Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Ed Norton, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Owen Wilson and Tom Wilkinson. Everybody is extremely funny, but the charmismatic Ralph Fiennes deserves the biggest kudos as he demonstrates his talents way beyond his usual melancholic and brooding leading roles from Shakespeare to Dickens.

It's not just a good laugh, but The Grand Budapest Hotel is a hilarious masterpiece worth watching again and again on the big screen!

The Art of Conning

There should be no boomer out there who would dislike the movie American Hustle. And this boomer liked the flick so much that I watched it twice within a month! The 70's-era film with big hair, excessive cleavage, disco music and outlandish costumes was just a blast. Ever since The Fighter, I've become a big fan of director/writer/producer David O. Russell. Who cares if George Clooney and Lily Tomlin hated him? Here's a director who went through a professional (a six-year hiatus with no film) and personal (his son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder) crisis and re-emerged in Hollywood at the top of his game! So it's no surprise that Russell wrote a story about resilience and survival with such wit and humour. So far, both the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild Awards loved the film. Russell was, for once, not a producer of this movie and left it to Bradley Cooper who, in addition to being one of the key supporting actors, was also the co-executive producer.

This is a movie which showcased its actors. That's why for the second consecutive year (after last year's Silver Linings Playbook), Russell once again led his cast to Oscar nominations in all four acting categories with Christian Bale (Best Actor), Amy Adams (Best Actress), Jennifer Lawrence (Best Supporting Actress) and Bradley Cooper (Best Supporting Actor). Every single one of them excelled in this film and on top of that, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K. and Robert De Niro all gave outstanding supporting performances.

Amidst this excellent cast, I have to root for Amy Adams as the winner of Best Actress at the Oscars on March 2. If I were a member of the Academy, it would have been a toss-up between Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine and Amy Adams in this film. All the nominees in this category probably deserved to win, but there's a difference between who ought to win and who I want to win. It's unfair that Jennifer Lawrence has almost overshadowed Adams in all the media coverage on her supporting role. But Adams's performance was just 'one hit out of the ballpark' strong! From her previous outstanding, but diverse roles in The Fighter, The Master and even the recent Her, one would never have thought that she could play such a glamourous, clever, scheming female con artist. But sporting extreme cleavage for the most part of the movie, Adams as Sydney Prosser was dazzlingly hot and charismatic in this film! The sharp contrast against her 'girl next door' role in Her all the more confirmed her acting sophistication. Everbody could only remember Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julia and Julia and almost nobody recalls Amy Adams as the other Julia in the film. But in American Hustle, Adams, the ultimate femme fatale, with her irresistible animal magnetism, just made the movie!

The entire flick was based on the 'conning' theme - "people believe what they want to believe". So, if you agree with this premise, nothing is off limits in the art of conning. As a crime comedy, the film was surprisingly brain-wracking and I'd recommend that you pay full attention every single minute. Otherwise, if you snooze, you lose! There were so many metaphors throughout the movie - hairdos played a very major role! Big hair, curly hair, toupees, comb-overs, showgirl updos, bouffants, permed hair, afros... you name it! Most of the male and female leading and supporting actors at one point wore either curlers or hairpieces in the movie. Can we see through the characters behind the hairdos? That's the main question for the audience.

Then there's the ice-fishing story trying to be told many times in the film by the popular U.S. comedian Louis C.K., but never got finished. And the numerous fires, explosions and accidents started by Jennifer Lawrence in her role as Rosalyn, the Long-Island homemaker, the loose-cannon wife who almost brought about the downfall of con man Irving Rosenfeld, masterfully played by Christian Bale.

Jeremy Renner didn't get any award nominations for his supporting role as New Jersey mayor Carmine Polito. But his cartoonish performance was so comical and convincing that he kind of reminded me of Chris Christie in his current Bridgegate crisis.

All in all, a two-thumbs-up movie if you want to laugh, morally reflect and be entertained at the same time!

Beautiful But Sad Futuristic Movie

Her is the kind of movie that is so good that you immediately have to pay some attention to its director and writer Spike Jonze who is the ex-husband of another talented director, Sophia Coppola. I never saw any of his three previous feature films - Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Where The Wild Things Are - but now, I'd want to see them all.

I've never liked futuristic movies because most of them are not realistic; but Her is one that could disturbingly be real in the very near future! I went and saw it because so many film critics and talk show hosts loved it - the movie was nominated for three Golden Globes (and would probably win at least one tonight) and won 37 international awards including the Best Screenplay for the 2014 Toronto Film Critics Association Awards.

Upon seeing the movie, you'll marvel first at the brilliant and clever original screenplay; then the outstanding acting by Joaquin Phoenix; followed by the beautiful cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema (The Fighter and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and the direction of Spike Jonze.

By now, everybody who is curious about movies must know that Her is a science fiction about a writer who falls in love with his 'female' operating system produced by artificial intelligence. My first reaction to the trailer was that it's a stupid concept - particularly when you saw the lead actor Joaquin Phoenix interacting with a computer! But, lo and behold, it's actually quite believable and very clever.

It took Jonze only five months to write his first draft of the story, but he never doubted that Phoenix would be his first choice as playing Theodore, the lonely writer who writes love letters for other people. After all, which male actor of our times could convincingly act for the majority of time on screen talking to himself? Well, or talking to a fake person who's also his OS? And besides being credible, Phoenix is adoringly sad and sweet at the same time.

While shooting the movie, the OS voice was played by British actress Samantha Morton who was on the set in a secluded box communicating with Phoenix without actually seeing each other. But after the movie was shot, both the director and Morton agreed that she's not the right voice. So Scarlett Johansson was brought in as the new Samantha and her voice was primarily recorded in the post-production studio with Phoenix being present with her as well. But what a great choice! Johansson gave a sexy, empathetic, witty and jealous performance of Samantha without the distraction of her physical attraction.

I always feel that Amy Adams is probably one of the most underestimated actresses of Hollywood. In American Hustle, for instance, Adams should be given all the acting compliments instead of the Hollywood 'it' girl Jennifer Lawrence. In this movie, Adams played Amy, the wonderful neighbour and platonic friend of Theodore's, with minimal make-up and full Silicon-Valley personality and appearance. Olivia Wilde also shed her usual heavy cosmetics to play the pretty, brainy but neurotic blind date of Theodore's.

The movie was made, for the most part, in Los Angeles, with two weeks of filming in Shanghai as the futuristic city. But what I love about the film is that it's extremely funny and sad at the same time. It's ridiculous that human beings have been reduced to a state that is incapable of having any healthy relationships with another person. Instead, we find comfort in falling in love with an invisible OS who becomes our personal assistant, our advisor in relationships, and our love object as well. But judging from how everybody is so addicted to technology nowadays, it's not hard to imagine that we might all become Theodore's and Amy's in the very near future.

Even though you expect Her to be witty, there are so many more clever moments that surprise you. The extremely funny video games such as the scoring of the Mommy points and the SexyKitten voice played by Kristen Whig are just two examples. It's a movie that bewilders you and yet depresses you at the same time. Maybe it's time to take some down time from our smartphones, our tablets and other electronic devices, and focus on our relationships with our loved ones instead?

The Old Man And The Sea

Robert Redford's All Is Lost reminds all viewers of Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea and Ang Lee's Life of Pi. But its originality trumps any other movie out there this year. It's about an experienced sailor facing mortality in a tempest, but it's also a study of humanity as well as a horror movie at sea!

Hollywood seemed to dwell a lot lately on how men and women combat adversities - whether it's Sandra Bullock stranded in space in Gravity or Our Man, Robert Redford, fighting for survival at sea in this film. The entire movie is almost like a silent one featuring a one-man show. There's no other actor, not even any animals, except for Redford who only uttered two lines in the entire movie.

You don't have to be an avid sailor to appreciate this movie, but if you love to sail, you might even like it better. I loved Margin Call, the first feature film by the same director J.C. Chandor, who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay last year. With All Is Lost, he tried a totally different genre with men's fight against nature. Maybe it's because Margin Call was first shown at Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival that the 39-year-old up-and-coming director teamed up with the 77-year-old Redford in this unusual work.

If you think you'll be bored during this movie because there's no dialogue, then you're totally wrong! In fact, I kept asking myself throughout the film what possibly would be the next move of Our Man, the character played by Redford. He managed to survive adversity after adversity and his hope never faded. The ending is magnificent and is subject to different interpretations. Like Ron Howard's Rush, which is more than a racecar movie, All Is Lost is really a film about our approach to life.

This year's Academy Awards contention will be very competitive - Redford is rumoured to be definitely nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor. Because he's never won an Oscar before, chances of his winning this one at his age are pretty high. I personally think he should definitely be awarded for his efforts - four months of shooting this movie at sea in the Bahamas, California and Mexico without having one dry day. Plus, he refused to use any stunt man even for the most challenging storm scenes. But Redford might have to compete with Forest Whitaker in The Butler, Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips, Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years A Slave and possibly Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club.

In the meantime, I'll be interested in your interpretation of the concluding scene of All Is Lost!

High Tension At Sea

The docudrama Captain Phillips has been earning rave reviews from both critics and audiences alike. I saw it over the Thanksgiving weekend and was not disappointed.

I've never been a fan of Tom Hanks, but his performance in this film would probably earn him another Oscar (let's reserve our final judgement until we see Robert Redford in his upcoming movie All Is Lost)! He's so good as a regular guy that even the real-life Captain Richard Phillips was impressed. He met with Hanks three times in the last two years at his Vermont farmhouse prior to filming.

In real life, Hanks is an extremely funny guy. Not only did he disclose to the world that he's suffering from Type 2 diabetes on the Late Show with David Letterman, but he also talked about his friendship with the four Somali actors who were recruited from Minneapolis - the largest concentration of Somalis in the U.S. He joked about their names without sounding like a racist, and it was extremely funny - who else would have friends called Barkhad, Barkhad, Faysal and Mahat? Even though they were novice actors, Barkhad Abdi, who played Muse in the film, was almost as good as Hanks himself. It was reported that Hanks didn't get a chance to meet his Somali co-actors until the first scene when they appeared on board the ship without any translators at work in order to create the tensest scene possible.

Kudos go to director Paul Greengrass, a Cambridge-educated Brit, who's best known for his two movies within the Bourne franchise - The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Supremacy - and United 93. He was able to make a docudrama so tense and captivating that by the end of the movie, my knees were still shaking. In fact, the second half of the film was so tense that you'd almost want to scream aloud for the hijacked captain. Towards the end of the movie, it's obvious that the captain was suffering from intense post-traumatic stress. In fact, the real-life Phillips told USA Today that for a period of time, he would wake up at 5 a.m. every day crying like a baby and remembering how lucky he was to be alive. Although this aftermath was not included in the movie, Tom Hanks gave us a strong enough performance for us to almost weep with him when we saw him safe.

The real-life captain gave a lot of credit to the Navy SEALs whom he regarded as the real heroes who saved him. There have been a lot of movies about the SEALs' bravery, but their action in this film made you wish that every country could have a team of heroes and protectors like Max Martini and his cool SWAT team.

The real tragedy of this whole true story is really the dire livelihood led by millions in Somalia. The deprived fishermen turned pirates consider these hijackings at sea as ordinary business. So until they can find some decent means of making a living, they will continue to be pirates. As Captain Phillips asked in the film, "There's gotta be a better way to live than hijacking ships and harming people?" "Only in America," Muse responded..."Only in America!" And the irony is that he finally got a chance to see America, but from prison!

Kennedy Assassination From A Different Perspective

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the movie Parkland gave an interesting perspective from four different angles - from the doctors and nurses on duty that fatally tragic day in Parkland Hospital, Dallas; from the alleged assassin's family; from the Secret Service and FBI agents' perspective; and from the shop owner who amateurishly filmed the entire assassination from his 8mm camera from a nearby rooftop.

In spite of pretty bad reviews from major film critics, the movie, in my opinion, was kind of refreshing. Many people compared it to Emilio Estevez's Bobby from 2006, but they are really apples and oranges.

It's pure fate that the team of residents and the head nurse from the Parkland Hospital had to have the dying President on their watch. In spite of the traumatic experience and the best rescuing efforts they had given, JFK still passed away in a pool of blood. I've never seen a resident doctor as good looking as Zac Efron, but the entire hospital team gave a credible performance. I've always been a fan of award-winning actor Marcia Gay Harden, who played the role of Parkland's head nurse. I also had the good fortune of recently meeting her in a New York hotel elevator where I've had a two-minute conversation about filming in Toronto with her. She has always been an intense actor, but in this movie, she hardly spoke more than five sentences in the emergency room.

Nobody has ever liked the FBI or Secret Service agents, and in this movie, both teams were portrayed as brutally selfish. The former was concerned only about destroying evidence to cover their asses, and Billy Bob Thornton, who skillfully played the stoic role of the head of Secret Service, Forrest Sorrels, was frustrated only because JFK was the first man he's ever lost on his 30-year watch.

The entire Oswald family was as creepy as the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, himself. James Badge Dale, who was one of the villains in Iron Man 3, played the role of Robert Oswald, Lee Harvey's brother. It's obvious that he was never close to his brother, but blood is thicker than water. Award-winning actor Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook) played the Oswald brothers' mother Marguerite, who was portrayed almost as insane as his murdered son. It's true that nobody can conclude, for sure, even to this day that Lee Harvey Oswald was either a U.S. agent who got framed or a Russian agent who was hired to assassinate the President.

As usual, the media love Paul Giamatti who was described by the film critics as the only laudable character (Abraham Zapruder) and actor in the entire movie. This is not a difficult role for Giamatti having seen him in more challenging roles such as Barney's Version and Sideways.

Director Peter Landesman is very much a novice as this was his directorial debut. But given the fact that he adapted the story from Vincent Bugliosi's book Four Days In November and his strong editing work between real footage of the assassination and the fake scenes, he has demonstrated enough potential to carry on with his directing pursuit.

No matter what perspective the film took, one fact remains inarguable - the impact of JFK's death was so huge and overwhelming on all Americans that they will remember his tragedy and legacy to this day and for 50 more years to come!

The Psychology Of Ruthless Competition

I was so reluctant to see Rush when I first watched the trailer. But a New York Times rave review convinced me otherwise. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised emerging from the cinema tonight.

My confidence in Ron Howard the director also explained why I changed my mind about going to this movie. Howard has the track record of undeniably great works, including Apollo 13, Backdraft, A Beautiful Mind and Frost/Nixon. Similar to Ang Lee, his talent is so diverse and he has demonstrated great versatility in a wide range of film genres.

Howard's directorial debut in 1977, Grand Theft Auto, was his only other movie focusing on cars. Other than that, Howard admitted that he knew nothing about car-racing prior to making this movie. It was the talented British screenwriter Peter Morgan, with whom Howard collaborated in Frost/Nixon, who first approached him with the script. Howard became interested and started taking some lessons in Formula Three racing in order to get a feel of the thrill. Morgan, whose wife is Austrian, also met with the real Niki Lauda for some 30 dinners in a Vienna restaurant to get an in-depth analysis from the former world champion himself.

The resulting work is a superb work of art. Howard took the audience right behind and in front of the racecar driver's seat - with the camera so close sometimes that you could almost count the driver's eyelashes. But you don't need to be a racecar fan to enjoy this movie. Technically, it may be a movie about autoracing, but Howard really took the sport to a macro level - it's the psychology of competition between the two rivals - British James Hunt (played by Chris Hemsworth) and Austrian Niki Lauda (played by Daniel Bruhl) - which was fascinating. Two polar-opposite individuals with different philosophies in life anchored the rivalry, respect and a life-long love-hate relationship between the two top drivers of the 1970s. Howard also left it to the audience to determine whose side are they on. As a director, he was deliberately unbiased.

Both principal actors are superb. Australian heartthrob Chris Hemsworth (best known for his role in Thor) has the good looks and charisma of playboy Hunt, while Spanish-born German actor Daniel Bruhl (Inglourious Basterds) demonstrates the precision, determination and ruthlessness of Lauder. Both were world champions, but in the end, the film left you questioning whether you're the living-for-the-present Hunt, or the committed, serious and hard-working Lauda. One may be intoxiated by Hunt, but it's the tough, persevering Lauda that one wants to emulate in life.

In spite of the film's dramatization of the dangerous sport, the movie is also very true to history which makes it all the more fascinating. The 64-year-old Lauder provided a lot of input and the movie was shot in actual racing circuits in 11 locations in England and Germany. Full attention to detail was paid to the era of the 1970s. If you like docu-dramas, you will love this film!